Against the motion: Technology is a vital ingredient for the

enhancement of learning

Tansy Jessop@tansyjtweets @TESTAwin

20 June 2016

Two projects about A&FFive principles

P 1: The quality of teaching matters more than technology

Lessons from Stand and Deliver

• Know your subject matter • Select, simplify, structure and organise• Connect with prior knowledge• Use metaphor, analogy, story, example,

demonstration• Challenge and demand

P 2: Assessment and feedback are vital to student learning

Feedback is the single most influential factor in student learning. (Hattie 2009)

Assessment drives what students pay attention to, and defines the actual curriculum (Ramsden 1992).

It’s the vital ingredient

Assessment is the senior partner in learning and teaching. Get it wrong, and the rest collapses. (Biggs & Tang 2011)

P 3: Assessment is more relational than technical

In mass higher education, students are looking for a relationship with tutors in feedback (Nicol 2010).

Dissatisfaction with feedback in the NSS is a symptom of impoverished dialogue (Nicol 2010).

Paradigm What it looks like

Technical rational Focus on data and tools

Relational Focus on people

Emancipatory Focus on systems and structures

P 4: Effects of technology on learning are not yet clear

From big to smaller…

And smaller and smaller…

With more and more information..

• 1000 Bytes = 1 Kilobyte • 1000 Kilobytes = 1 Megabyte • 1000 Megabytes = 1 Gigabyte • 1000 Gigabytes = 1 Terabyte • 1000 Terabytes = 1 Petabyte • 1000 Petabytes = 1 Exabyte• 1000 Exabytes = 1 Zettabyte • 1000 Zettabytes = 1 Yottabyte • 1000 Yottabytes = 1 Brontobyte• 1000 Brontobytes = 1 Geopbyte

To what effect?

Wisdom from the poets

In the age of technology there is constant access to vast amounts of information. The basket overflows; people get overwhelmed; the eye of the storm is not so much what goes on in the world, it is the confusion of how to think, feel, digest, and react to what goes on.

Criss Jami, Venus in Arms

My few stabs

• Fragmentation• High speed• What happened to ‘deep learning’?• Why an upsurge in the ‘slow’ movement?• Pressure, work intensification• The rise in mental health issues• Knowledge not wisdom• Soundbites not substance

FP 5: Besides the military invented most technology

Technology is neutral.

It can be used for good or ill.

Vital or deadly ingredient?

Assessment and feedback are the vital victuals

Five approaches to enhancing learning from A&F

1. Programme-level assessment design2. More learning, less measuring3. Making formative meaningful4. Connecting feedback5. Building shared understanding with students

The TESTA Methodology

75 PROGRAMME AUDITS

Programme Team

Meeting

Based on assessment principles

• ‘Time-on-task’ (Gibbs 2004)• Challenging and high expectations (Chickering and

Gamson 1987)• Internalising goals and standards (Sadler 1989; Nicol

and McFarlane-Dick 2006)• Prompt, detailed, specific, developmental, dialogic

feedback (Gibbs 2004; Nicol 2010)• Deep learning (Marton and Saljo 1976).

TESTA….

“…is a way of thinking about assessment and feedback”

Graham Gibbs

1. Programme level assessment design

Does IKEA 101 work for complex learning?

Content-driven curriculum

Huge variations

• What is striking for you about this data?

• How does it compare with your context?

• Does variation matter?

Assessment features across a 3 year UG degree (n=75)Characteristic Range

Summative 12 -227

Formative 0 - 116

Varieties of assessment 5 - 21

Proportion of examinations 0% - 87%

Time to return marks & feedback 10 - 42 days

Volume of oral feedback 37 -1800 minutes

Volume of written feedback 936 - 22,000 words

And some patterns…Characteristic Low Medium High

Volume of summative assessment

Below 33 40-48 More than 48

Volume of formative only Below 1 5-19 More than 19

% of tasks by examinations Below 11% 22-31% More than 31%

Variety of assessment methods

Below 8 11-15 More than 15

Written feedback in words Less than 3,800 6,000-7,600 More than 7,600

Actions based on evidence

a) Reduction in summative b) Increase in formative c) Streamlined varieties d) More or less feedback depending…e) Quantifiable f) Every time a coconut with each feature

2. More learning, less measuring

• Summative ‘pedagogies of control’

• Circa 2 per module in UK

• Ratio of 1:8 of formative to summative

• Formative weakly understood and practised

What students say…

• A lot of people don’t do wider reading. You just focus on your essay question.

• In Weeks 9 to 12 there is hardly anyone in our lectures. I'd rather use those two hours of lectures to get the assignment done.

• It’s been non-stop assignments, and I’m now free of assignments until the exams – I’ve had to rush every piece of work I’ve done.

What students say about formative

• If there weren’t loads of other assessments, I’d do it.

• If there are no actual consequences of not doing it, most students are going to sit in the bar.

• It’s good to know you’re being graded because you take it more seriously.

• The lecturers do formative assessment but we don’t get any feedback on it.

Assessment Arms Race

3. Make formative meaningful

1. Reduce summative, increase formative2. Programme decision3. Formative in the public domain4. Link formative and summative5. Risky, creative, challenging tasks6. Students read and produce more7. Deepens understanding of value of formative

Theme 3: Connecting feedback

Take five

• Choose a quote that strikes you.

• What is the key issue?

• What strategies might address this issue?

What students say…

The feedback is generally focused on the module.

It’s difficult because your assignments are so detached from the next one you do for that subject. They don’t relate to each other.

Because it’s at the end of the module, it doesn’t feed into our future work.

I read it and think “Well, that’s fine but I’ve already handed it in now and got the mark. It’s too late”.

Students say the feedback relationship is broken…

Because they have to mark so many that our essay becomes lost in the sea that they have to mark.

It was like ‘Who’s Holly?’ It’s that relationship where you’re just a student.

Here they say ‘Oh yes, I don’t know who you are. Got too many to remember, don’t really care, I’ll mark you on your assignment’.

How to connect feedback

• Conversation: who starts the dialogue?• Iterative cycles of reflection across modules• Quick generic feedback: the ‘Sherlock’ factor• Feedback synthesis tasks• Technology: audio, screencast and blogging• From feedback as ‘telling’…• … to feedback as asking questions

5. Building shared understanding with students

• Consistently low scores on the AEQ for clear goals and standards

• Alienation from the tools, especially criteria and guidelines

• Symptoms: perceptions of marker variation, unfair standards and inconsistencies in practice

What students say…

We’ve got two tutors- one marks completely differently to the other and it’s pot luck which one you get.

They have different criteria, they build up their own criteria.

It’s such a guessing game.... You don’t know what they expect from you.

What students say…

There are criteria, but I find them really strange. There’s “writing coherently, making sure the argument that you present is backed up with evidence”.

I get the impression that they don't even look at the marking criteria. They read the essay and then they get a general impression, then they pluck a mark from the air. I don’t have any idea of why it got that mark

Taking action: internalising goals and standards•Regular calibration exercises•Discussion and dialogue•Discipline specific criteria (no cut and paste)

Staff Team

•Rewrite/co-create criteria•Marking exercises (ASKE CETL)•Design and value formative

Staff and students

•Enter secret garden - peer review•Engage in drafting processes•Self-reflection

Students

Regardless of technology….

Enhancing learning is about educational paradigms

Transmission Model

Social Constructivist Model

References

Boud, D. and Molloy, E. (2013) ‘Rethinking models of feedback for learning: The challenge of design’, Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 38(6), pp. 698–712. doi: 10.1080/02602938.2012.691462.Gibbs, G. & Simpson, C. (2004) Conditions r which assessment supports students' learning. Learning and Teaching in Higher Education. 1(1): 3-31.Harland, T., McLean, A., Wass, R., Miller, E. and Sim, K. N. (2014) ‘An assessment arms race and its fallout: High-stakes grading and the case for slow scholarship’, Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 40(4), pp. 528–541. doi: 10.1080/02602938.2014.931927.Hughes, G. (2014) Ipsative Assessment. Basingstoke. Palgrave MacMillan.Jessop, T. and Maleckar, B. (2014). The Influence of disciplinary assessment patterns on student learning: a comparative study. Studies in Higher Education. Published Online 27 August 2014 http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03075079.2014.943170Jessop, T. , El Hakim, Y. and Gibbs, G. (2014) The whole is greater than the sum of its parts: a large-scale study of students’ learning in response to different assessment patterns. Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education. 39(1) 73-88.Nicol, D. (2010) From monologue to dialogue: improving written feedback processes in mass higher education, Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 35: 5, 501 – 517.O'Donovan, B , Price, M. and Rust, C. (2008) 'Developing student understanding of assessment standards: a nested hierarchy of approaches', Teaching in Higher Education, 13: 2, 205 — 217Sadler, D. R. (1989) ‘Formative assessment and the design of instructional systems’, Instructional Science, 18(2), pp. 119–144. doi: 10.1007/bf00117714.Shulman, L. (2004) Teaching as Community Property. San Francisco. Jossey Bass.